Dragonhand is an augmented reality real-time dragon-battling game that can be played in or out of augmented reality. It centres around the player growing, training and breeding dragons in order to battle creatures and other dragons in real-time. Mini-games are also being considered but combat is the main driver.

The interface is one of sending commands rather than directly controlling the beasts. Players can choose the behaviours and spells that the dragons use and can also take control of the dragons’ spell-casting to some extent.

The dragons can move on land, in air or sea and can change at any time.

So, I’ve decided to start writing about a game that I’ve been developing for a while. Mostly to see if anyone else is interested in the gameplay style that I’m going for.

Its about dragons, mostly. They fight, breed and make baby dragons who grow up to fight as well. They collect things like food, booty (the gold and gems kin), mana. They are controlled by you in a kind of hands-off, partnership rather than a straight master-slave scenario. You wouldn’t refer to them as pets, really.

The goal was to be able to control complex interactions with simple, strategic or tactical commands and only intervene when things were going badly or the goal had changed. I wanted it to feel like trying to guide a cyclone or nudge a swarm.